Listening to Embryonic Murderers with William Faulkner (and the Catholic Church)

Somebody to talk to, as we all seem to need, want, have to have, not to converse with you nor even agree with you, but just to keep quiet and listen. Which is all that people really want, really need; I meant, to behave themselves, keep out of one another’s hair; the maladjustments which they tell us breed the arsonists and rapists and murderers and thieves and the rest of the anti-social enemies, are not really maladjustments but simply because the embryonic murderers and thieves didn’t have anybody to listen to them: which is an idea the catholic church discovered two thousand years ago only it just didn’t carry it far enough or maybe it was too busy being the church to have to bother with man, or maybe it wasn’t the church’s fault at all but simply because it had to deal with human beings and maybe if the world was just populated with a kind of dumb creature half of which were dumb, couldn’t do anything but listen to the other half, couldn’t even escape from having to listen to the other half, there wouldn’t be any war.

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Thanks for this wonderful Faulkner quote. It is a pity that most folks have Faulkner thrown at them when they are too young and not yet beat up by life enough to understand the deep sense of pity and the gracious love for broken humanity that makes him one of the great Christian humanists. Unless life has had a tragic beginning, best to wait until about 47 to expect to read Faulkner with real understanding and pleasure.

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